Matthias Gamer

Matthias Gamer is a Professor of Experimental Clinical Psychology at the University of Würzburg in Germany, a position he has held since 2015. He studied psychology at the University of Mainz, where he completed his doctorate in 2008, and subsequently worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, where he led an independent research group on Social and Applied Psychophysiology from 2011 until his move to Würzburg. With over 10,500 citations on Google Scholar, his research spans cognitive psychology, human memory, emotion, social neuroscience, and psychology and law.

Gamer has been a central figure in the scientific critique of polygraph validity, arguing that the Comparison Question Test has weak scientific validity which cannot be remedied by using neuroimaging measures. His work on the Concealed Information Test (CIT) has explored how different physiological measures—including skin conductance, reaction time, and fMRI—reflect distinct mental processes, with his research showing that while skin conductance responding may be explained by orienting theory, response inhibition drives reaction time and brain responses to concealed information. His influential 2014 review on neuroimaging for deception detection critically examined the field's methodological shortcomings, noting that research had been unsystematic and neglected accumulated knowledge about pitfalls extensively discussed regarding the polygraph. Most recently, his 2024 paper on artificial intelligence and lie detection warned that current approaches have focused on technical aspects at the expense of solid methodological and theoretical foundation, offering recommendations for development and regulation of AI-based deception detection.

Gamer has established himself as a leading international voice on deception detection methodology and validity. He is a founding member of the European consortium of Psychological Research On Deception Detection (E-PRODD) and has served as Guest Associate Editor for Frontiers in Cognitive Science and Frontiers in Human Neuroscience on the research topic of deception and its detection. His collaborative research network includes frequent co-authorship with prominent deception researchers including Kristina Suchotzki, Bruno Verschuere, Ewout H. Meijer, and Gershon Ben-Shakhar, forming a core group that has shaped modern scientific understanding of credibility assessment. He has served as an ad hoc reviewer for over 60 journals including Science, PNAS, Journal of Neuroscience, and Psychophysiology.

While his polygraph and deception detection research represents a major strand of his scientific contributions, Gamer's broader academic work integrates multiple disciplines. His current research focuses on the mechanisms of social attention processes—investigating how people direct attention during interpersonal contact and how these processes unfold at the neural level. This interdisciplinary approach, combining experimental psychology, neuroscience, and forensic applications, positions him as a researcher who examines fundamental cognitive and affective processes while maintaining rigorous attention to real-world implications for law enforcement and security contexts.